Rails - Dec 2007 - one-to-many from script/generate scaffold <model> <controller>

I followed a tutorial step by step which resulted in what has been,
for
me, the holy grail:  a one-to-many relationship.  A screenshot of what
I
ended up with:

 Name: Chili Cookoff

Budget: 150.0
Edit | Back
Itemized Expenses
2007-12-09 	Fire Department 	$25.00
2007-12-10 	Parties R Us 	        $75.00

<http://expenses.googlecode.com/files/chili_cookoff.png>, clearly
demonstrating the "many" expenses per accounts; a
"one-to-many"
relationship with CRUD interface.

The step which was most mysterious in the tutorial:

"Generate the scaffolding by typing

$ script/generate scaffold account expenses

That command generates a number of files for us; files we''d rather
not
create by hand. The first parameter (account) specifies the name of
the
model, which is generated in the app/models/account.rb file. The
second
parameter (expenses) specifies the name of the controller, which is
generated in the app/controllers/expenses_controller.rb file. The
scaffold generator also created template files for the views of our
application."

<http://developer.apple.com/tools/rubyonrails.html>


This is all well and good, but the choice for the singular versus
plural
choice is unclear to me.  Both models are singular, as expected.
Why,
then, is it "expenses" and not "expense" in the above
scaffold
command?
Is this significant, a typo, or is the name of the scaffold here
immaterial?

It strikes me that there''s an intuitive mismatch between navigating
to
<http://localhost:3000/expenses> and being presented with a listing
of
accounts:

Listing accounts
Name 	Budget
Chili Cookoff 	150.0 	Show 	Edit 	Destroy
Car Wash 	25.0 	Show 	Edit 	Destroy
Pancake Breakfast 	125.0 	Show 	Edit 	Destroy
Dunk the Programmer 	50.0 	Show 	Edit 	Destroy

New account

rather than a listing of expenses.

Which brings me to my next question:  what''s the connection between
the
model name, Expense, and the name of this particular controller,
expenses_controller.rb?  Could it have been "script/generate scaffold
account foo", or was it critical that "expenses" match up with
the
Expense model?

Additionally:

"$ rake migrate

Next we need an Expense model to wrap the expenses table. Use the
generator to create the model by typing

$ script/generate model expense

That command gives us an empty Expense model class. Now we have to
tell Rails that a relationship exists between the accounts and
expenses tables. (Rails can''t accurately derive relationships simply
by looking at the database schema.) Specifically, an expense belongs
to an account. Declare that relationship in the Expense model by
updating the app/models/expense.rb file as follows:

class Expense < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :account
end"

Ok, the above makes sense, except for:  why the choice to run "script/
generate model" versus they initially ran "script/generate
migration"?

For the Accounts model they used a migration, but for expenses they
use "generate model"; why?



thanks,

Thufir
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